1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to integrated pressurized fluid systems in general, such as for hydraulic regenerative drive systems, and, more particularly, to an integrated pressurized fluid system including a pressure vessel assembly containing at least one hydraulic fluid accumulator.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In conventional integrated pressurized fluid systems the recovered energy is normally accumulated in flywheel accumulators, in electrochemical batteries or in hydraulic fluid accumulators. The latter are of known technology and, in comparison with the other recovery and accumulation arrangements, they are more flexible in use, notably in connection with a vehicular transmission to which they are connected. On the other hand they remain less efficient in terms of mass and volume and consequently raise serious problems for fitting onto motor vehicles. In addition to penalizing the energy savings obtained, these problems of dead weight and bulk lead to high costs linked either with the hydraulic fluid accumulator itself or, mainly, with the modifications that have to be made to the vehicle to fit the accumulator. The result is that the motor vehicles equipped with the hydraulic fluid accumulator are no longer standard in any way and are therefore much more expensive to produce and maintain and that, furthermore, the equipment used for this installation cannot be transposed to another vehicle or modulated in size, which increases the overall cost of such an installation.
Accordingly, it is the intent of this invention to overcome these shortcomings of the prior art by providing a compact pressure vessel assembly combining all the accumulation functions and capable of being fitted without any substantial modification to various types of pressurized fluid systems, including standard motor vehicles equipped with hydraulic regenerative drive system designed for charging and discharging the hydraulic fluid accumulators.